


Into the Light

by EightMinutesToSunrise



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Abuse, Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Mind Games, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, Prison, Psychological Torture, Rebellion, Sexual Abuse, Torture, these tags make it seem graphic but most of this is offscreen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 07:58:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9538793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EightMinutesToSunrise/pseuds/EightMinutesToSunrise
Summary: After the General is captured by the tyrant he rebels against, he encounters a familiar voice and begins to unravel the identity of his most valuable informant.For Iniquiticity's TyrantVerse--I fear it's going to be nonsensical if you aren't familiar with this AU. There's two Washingtons running around. It's complicated.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iniquiticity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iniquiticity/gifts).
  * Inspired by [On the Construction and Tending of Greenhouses](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6184234) by [iniquiticity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iniquiticity/pseuds/iniquiticity). 



> ENDLESS THANK YOUS to iniquiticity for creating this wonderful sandbox and letting me play around in it.
> 
> Just in case you didn't listen to my earlier warning, TyrantVerse is weird and complicated, it's basically a fanfic for two other fanfics. The Washington from "On The Construction and Tending of Greenhouses" versus the Washington from "Striking Iron With Flint". If you're dead set on reading this but don't know TyrantVerse, the basic concept is:
> 
> Hamilton is forced into a marriage with George Washington (Wash #1, based on the Washington from IronFlint), who took over as emperor after the revolution (I made up my own backstory for how this happened)  
> He becomes an informant for the rebellion, where he meets:  
> The General (Wash #2, based on the Washington from Greenhouses), who he begins an affair with, but they can never see one another so that they can't give each other away if they're captured.
> 
> And all sorts of tragedy arises from there.

There is a myth, the General knows, about a girl who marries a monster, who will never come to her in the light. She lives alone, but when the sun sets and the lamps are extinguished an invisible man slips into her bed and lies with her. He can’t remember how it ends, or what the husband really was--he remembers only vague childhood musings that if the man were really a monster, she would feel his true form when they were in bed together.

“What was that?” The hand sliding up the General’s bare side stops. “You laughed.”

“I would never.” The General opens his eyes and it makes no difference--yellowish blotches bloom before his eyes, his senses desperately searching for input--the cellar is an impenetrable black. It’s safest if key members of the rebellion cannot identify each other, so the General must meet his most valued informant in a basement safe house without a candle. Their affair grew in the dark.

“You did. I’m bedding you at great personal risk and you laugh at me.”

“I was only wondering what you look like, darling.”

“I can look like whatever you want, General. If we must be in the dark, let us take every advantage of it.”

\---

He has spent years cultivating his identity as the General, and it is entirely for this moment--when the tyrant who has subjugated his nation has him bound and gagged, and stares down at him expecting him to cower. The man who hides within the General wants nothing more. The General plots his escape, evaluates every opportunity--each one ultimately useless. He’s helpless, and he stares up at his captor with eyes like icicles.

“You look nothing like I had expected,” Washington smirks. “What were you before you rose to your calling as a thorn in my side? A farmer?”

Close enough. The Marquis shoves him forward, and with his hands tied behind his back the General falls forward to the cold flagstones. He swallows a mouthful of coppery saliva.

“Your excellency! You wanted to see me?” The call comes from a passage to the left of the tyrant’s throne, echoing. The General freezes. He knows the voice--sharply melodic, fast, a little nasal--he knows it well. He has heard it whisper about freedom in the dead of night, about tyrants and uprisings and, twice, about love.

He has no name to match the voice. Only the codename that Hercules had assigned his prize informant, “Publius.” From the quality of his information and the bruises the General had to avoid once their meetings had turned from mere briefings into trysts, he had assumed that Publius was a servant or slave of the tyrant’s house. He must be close enough to Washington to hear his military briefings and to field his rages.

But that is not how a servant greets his master.

All three of them--General, tyrant, and Marquis--turn to the doorway, and when the young man strides into view he stops, taking in the scene, before directing his attention to Washington. To his husband.

Because the General recognizes him by sight, as well.

The voice--that of the rebellion’s greatest informant and the General’s lover--belongs to Prince Alexander Washington, the tyrant’s consort. Because of course, he has never heard the prince speak, and he has never seen his lover’s face. Has never correlated them in any way, so well did the man play his part as a loyal plaything to their emperor.

Their long nocturnal talks had turned to the prince only once. Overwhelmed by the closing window of opportunity to raid a monarchist outpost, the General had paced the tar black cellar he and Publius knew so well, ranting in a harsh whisper that “even in the moment when we believe the fort is empty, he is sure to have left some vestige behind--the Marquis, or that lackey of his, the Prince--”

Publius shifted where he sat leaning against the cold earth wall. “Don’t call him that.”

“What else could he be?” The General said, exasperated.

The young man sighed. “The prince is a whore for the tyrant to fuck and a lightning rod for the hatred of his people. He is hardly let near his plans at all, much less would he be involved in them.”

The General had huffed, unsure what made fucking the tyrant so different from planning with the tyrant. But that was clear now. It was different because after the prince--after Publius--had finished fucking the tyrant, he turned around and handed any vulnerability he could scavenge to the rebellion.

As all this flashes through the General’s mind, the prince does not miss a step, unaware that his general and paramour kneels so close at hand. He sways a little, intentionally sultry, as he makes his way to Washington. “Who is so important--” he spares a withering glance to the General, who hopes his shock doesn’t show in his face, “--that you would call me here, rather than join me in your quarters?”

Washington takes Alexander proprietarily by the chin, kisses him once, soundly, then turns him so he looks at the General. The General drops his eyes to the flagstones, watching the pair intently in his peripherals. It wouldn’t do to stare at the prince.

“I have caught the General, dearest.”

And the prince--crows. There’s no other word for his joyous laugh, and the General looks up, and sees a bright grin under frozen eyes. Do Alexander’s eyes always look dead, he wonders, or is it a tell? The prince turns back to his husband. “You’re brilliant. Brilliant.” The tyrant kisses him again, and Alexander remains pliant, but as soon as it’s over he turns, finds his way out of his arms.

He goes directly to the General, eyes piercing and voice scathing. “You don’t look like much. His excellency has ten men who look like you to polish his boots.” He lashes forward and pulls the gag out of the General’s mouth. “Tell me who you think you are to defy the savior who freed you and your country.”

It’s a good move. Alexander won’t know that it’s him--he wants to hear his voice and confirm his identity.

It’s a risky move, as well--the Marquis grabs Alexander’s wrist as he tosses the gag aside. The General doesn’t miss Alexander’s instinctual flinch, and the prince immediately tries uselessly to pull away. The Marquis scowls. “This is a dangerous criminal, my prince. Your excellency, control votre petit lion.”

“Let him do what he wants, Marquis. I’m intrigued.”

The Marquis lets the prince go, and Alexander warily returns his gaze to the General. “Speak up, then. You are the General?”

The General coughs. Swallows blood so he doesn’t spit it onto the man’s feet. “I am.” He meets Alexander’s dead eyes. “I am the leader of the rebellion and I will stand against the tyrant who rules our lands until my dying day.” Those dead eyes don’t change, don’t acknowledge anything.

The prince snaps, “you have kept his excellency from my bed, more times than I can count. And know that my hatred for my enemy is equaled only by my adoration,” his voice goes soft, “for my lord.”

The General hides Alexander’s true meaning deep in his heart. He had always been impressed by Publius’ eloquence, shaped by years of lies. He wishes so desperately to comfort the young man and tell him that someday, he will breathe life back into him--that his corpse mask will no longer be necessary.

It would, in all likelihood, be a lie. All he can offer Alexander is anonymity. The General adds, “His excellency can torture me all he likes. I will give him nothing. Not a plan, not a name, not a place.”

Not a name. The prince’s dead eyes narrow in a semblance of anger.

The Marquis laughs. “Oh, mon General. I will have you repeat those words as I flay the skin from your palms. Then I will have you sing every plan, every name, every place, to the tune of ‘Yankee Doodle.’”

“You will have to be quick, Marquis, he will be executed tomorrow, first light,” the tyrant says.

Alexander turns away from the General, his eyes lingering a moment--his hesitance is nearly as comforting as it is dangerous. “May I ask a favor, your excellency?” He trots back to the tyrant and places a hand on his chest, as the tyrant’s arm wraps around his slender frame. The emperor absently tucks a loose lock of Alexander’s hair behind his ear.

“You may have anything you like, as long as it is not something I do not wish to give.”

“I was thinking of John Laurens. You remember him.” If Washington remembers John Laurens, the General does as well. John Laurens killed a prominent member of the tyrant’s Military Cabinet--Charles Lee--only last month, on the General’s orders, and it was not his first assassination. The rebellion calls on him rarely. It is difficult to reach him, surrounded by his father’s men, but when it is necessary, his loyalty to their cause is total and his access second only to Publius’.

The tyrant scowls at the name. “I told you not to write to him.”

“And I haven’t! Not for years. You were right, I was a boy, and I no more need a playmate now than I would need--a rattle or a doll. But anyone can grow nostalgic for childhood. And I remembered all that he had lost to the General’s rebellion. His honor was forever tarnished when the General escaped his regiment.”

“Get to the point, Alex.” Washington says.

“He would love so much to see the General die,” Alexander glances back at the General. “It is a day’s ride. Put the execution off two days, send a messenger to Henry Laurens, and anyone else, this is a great victory, it should be witnessed!”

“I mean to hang the General’s broken body from my manor walls. There will be witnesses.”

Alexander sighs. “But not to his death! Let it be a warning. And please, as a favor to me--let John Laurens see him die. It would bring him peace, and I could have--closure, on the friendship we had. I would be so grateful.”

John Laurens had six hours to prepare to kill Charles Lee. With two days to plan--well, the General’s hope grows considerably.

“Would you want to see him?”

The prince shakes his head. “Honestly? No. I would not know what to say. Your excellency, I was not much when you--when you chose me. There is so much more to me now. More than I think he would understand.”

The tyrant stares from Alexander, to the General, to the Marquis, who shrugs. “I will not say no to a longer period in which to work.” To torture him for information.

“Fine, then,” Washington says. “I will tell Henry Laurens, and be sure his son is seated where you can watch him. I will inform the rest of my cabinet, as well.”

The General hopes he can be forgiven for averting his eyes from the grateful kisses Alexander gives his husband. The sacrifices made for their rebellion are not always--not usually--clean and clear. He looks up again and catches Alexander’s flirtatious smile as he hums into the tyrant’s neck and whispers, “and you will let me thank you more completely later, yes, my love?”

With a hand heavy on the back of Alexander’s neck, the tyrant nods and gestures him away.

Unknotting himself from the man’s arms, Alexander returns to the General and takes him by the chin--as the tyrant had done to him minutes before. His tone is mocking. “Take comfort, General. Even as your fate approaches, know that it is orchestrated by the wisest and most powerful man the world has ever known. It is an honor to die by such a hand.”

Alexander grins at him with all but his eyes--anyone else would call it cruel. The General’s breath catches in surprise and he tries to restrain an answering smile. This is Publius, who he has spent his best nights with, making a dirty joke before the unknowing emperor. “I will try to keep that that in mind, your highness.”

The tyrant watches Alexander leave, then looks back at the General--who is still watching the hallway where the man had disappeared. Washington huffs a laugh. “I have not seen that side of him in a long time. Perhaps I ought to keep you around, General,” he offers the title in jest, with a cold smile, “if only to spice up my marriage.”

The Marquis scowls. “I thought that was my job.”

“Your idea of spicing up my marriage is torturing poor Alexander until he will scarcely speak to me.”

“Because your marriage is better when you are not distracted by your husband and spend your nights with me, instead.” The Marquis, who the General had not previously taken for a pouter, kicks his prisoner hard in the side as an afterthought. The General keels to the floor.

“Do you know why you will lose, General?” the tyrant says conversationally, pointing after Alexander as he approaches his prisoner. “Alexander was one of my aides during the war. The common man was on my side then, you’ll recall. He was quick-witted, hungry to rise in society, and even then he was beautiful. But around the time I implemented martial law, he lost his enthusiasm for our cause. He tried to kill me as I slept. I sent him to die by firing squad and assumed that that was that.

“Not so. Months after the war ended I spotted him sneaking down a servant’s passage in the Schuyler castle. He had escaped his sentence, taken a job in their scullery, and risen to become the estate’s junior clerk. Philip Schuyler had no idea the disease of treachery living under his own roof.”

The General knew enough of his rebellion’s intelligence network to appreciate that even if Philip Schuyler did not, someone--at least one--in the estate had sheltered Alexander by choice. Anything that happened within ten miles of the Schuyler estate made it to the ears of the rebellion, in triplicate.

“I had to have him. He was no longer a threat, I am the most powerful man alive. No. I was merciful, and set myself the task of making my assassin my dearest pet. I couldn’t marry a clerk, so I paid Schuyler handsomely to adopt the boy--his daughters were scandalized,” he smiled. “Alexander had to be drugged out of his mind on our wedding day. The Marquis used a hot poker to train him to say “I do” when prompted, and he only barely managed it when the time came. I’ve asked, he doesn’t remember a bit of it, or of the night after,” the General shudders as Washington chuckles fondly. “And in the past three years, I have made him mine. That is why you will lose, General. Because the boy of nineteen that tried to shove a knife between my ribs is now a man of twenty-four who kisses me willingly whenever I desire.”

As the man who hides inside the General screams and curses, the General considers discretion the better part of valor and does not respond, goes dead like Alexander as the tyrant mocks and beats him and--finally--sends him to the dungeon to await the Marquis’ ministrations.

\---

The Marquis hangs him from the wall of a spacious prison chamber, shackled in place, and lays his tools out on a finely carved, bloodstained stone table. Knives, needles, branding irons. Rods and chains and razors. He leaves the General with a considering glance. Like a chef appraising a cut of meat.

While he is gone, a young woman with a red dress and matted curly hair slips in and quickly gathers up the tools. Without a look at the man on the wall, she slips away and the pad of her bare footsteps disappears--sooner than they should, he thinks, from the length of the hall he remembers. His head is still cloudy from the beating, so he isn’t sure. As the click of the Marquis’ heels returns, he pretends to pass out and lets the blood drool from his lips.

His feigned unconsciousness doesn’t stop the Marquis from cutting him with his long, exquisite fingernails when he finds his tools missing, but it protects the woman, whoever she was. The tall, lithe monster that is the Marquis stalks from the room and leaves the General alone for precious hours, during which time the castle above is ripped apart in searching.

The Marquis finally returns with a set of silver tools, not the gold filigree that the General had seen disappear into the servant’s sleeve. “Have you seen this?” he snaps, waving a long, serrated knife in the General’s face. “This is what his Excellency asks me to use instead. As though the art I am capable of is worthy of--any piece of metal with an edge. Of course, I agree to whatever he says, but the indignity of it is--”

And he is interrupted by a disheveled footman, who says that the West Wing is aflame--from the fine drawing room with the portrait of his Excellency at the Battle of Yorktown to the kitchen’s alcohol stores.

The West Wing is very far from the prisons.

The Marquis is out for the rest of the night and most of the morning hunting the arsonist through the woods, while a trained--but not artful--lackey breaks George’s ribs in a feeble attempt at getting information from him. George has had ribs broken before.

In the morning, a young man with wide, frightened eyes wipes the blood and grime from the General’s face and chest and, unobserved, pours a measure of the water down the prisoner’s throat. The dreamy haze of poppy obscures the pain and--to his poor interim torturer’s frustration--he floats through broken fingers with no more than a shout. At one point, a new torturer arrives in a major’s garb carrying a bucket of pig’s blood, and artfully paints it onto George, worsening the appearance of his injuries. When he is done George looks a wreck, and the man sits with his feet up on the rack and takes a nap. George follows suit.

Two days pass in this manner. The General is tortured, but only rarely by the Marquis, who is driven to distraction by a series of disasters he attributes to some “fantome dans Mount Vernon, your excellency--some spy is orchestrating this, you must let me kill the General, this is madness--” the General is too tired to wince at the thump of the Marquis’ weight against the prison wall.

“I must,” the tyrant growls, “do nothing. The rebels will not force my hand and neither will you, you pathetic worm.”

A long, long silence as the General strains his hearing.

He catches only a brief, plaintive whine, and then: “Of course, your excellency.”

Two days, but at times they feel like years, and at times--most often when servants come to him in the night with bowls of floral-scented water--they seem like minutes. Two days, and Washington barely feels he has a moment to think before he is kneeling on a wooden platform, rotten fruit thrown at him from every direction, as the tyrant’s allies and enemies wait for him to die.

\---

God, John had missed Alex. It seemed like a dreadful, selfish notion, to suffer missing his friend when Alex was at the mercy of a sadistic tyrant. But after so many years--he had seen Alex, certainly, at a distance in a carriage rolling through the streets or sitting silently by the emperor’s side at some state dinner--but after so many years without his quick wit or his sudden rages, his impassioned debates, it came to seem as though his friend was dead.

This was the closest he had been to him since Alex had been posing as a servant in the Schuyler estate. It had been dangerous for Alex to have any contact from his life as his Excellency’s aide, but when John had visited the castle with his father Angelica had sent him to the library to find a book for her and there Alex had been--dusting books. John had thought he was dead by firing squad.

John didn’t cry often, but he had cried then, he and Alex both.

One box away, Alex stares adoringly up at the tyrant. John splits his time watching for the signal and glancing at Alex to gauge how well he looks. He knows Alex, knows he would never become the complacent doll the tyrant forces him to be. Knows what toll this act would take on him.

He is trying to assess if the unnatural paleness of the young man’s skin is makeup or illness when a cantaloupe--a rare fruit, odd to bring one to an execution--hits the edge of the General’s execution platform with a wet smash.

Showtime.

He feels the tall man to his right--Cato, the only one of his guards he had hired himself--shifts his weight and grabs the collar of his coat. John lets himself be pulled bodily to his feet to the tune of screams and one--two--three gunshots. There’s no more, so John assumes the rebel sniper he’d enlisted had finished the job.

John feels the cold jab of gunmetal against his throat. Mimes fear as he glimpses the action below. Six black horses, each with a dummy corpse strapped to its saddle behind its rider, are galloping through the crowd, causing mayhem and mowing down soldiers. The entire box is so busy staring down at the execution-turned-melee they don’t notice Cato menacing his charge--John isn’t sure whether he should be proud that his plan is working so well or offended that they haven’t noticed the subplot of his exhaustively orchestrated narrative. Just to be sure, he shouts, “let me go, you rebel traitor!” loud enough that Alex and his husband notice simultaneously.

With a word from the emperor, the tyrant’s guards stride toward them. John’s father, finally cluing into his son’s predicament, tries to hold them off--afraid to put his son at greater risk--and in the confusion John and Cato edge toward the side of the box. John chances a look below. The General is gone, replaced by one of the cloaked corpses--which means that one of the bodies strapped behind John’s riders is actually the man himself. John had questioned that bit of theatrics, it was Hercules’ idea. But it’s growing on him now that’s he’s seeing it in action.

“John!” Alex cries out from behind the advancing guards. John just keeps shouting vague abuse at Cato.

“Stay back, Alex,” he calls, “this will all be over soon.” And that’s a promise that he goddamn means to keep.

Cato slaps his free hand over John’s mouth, silencing him. “You will let us leave, or Henry Lauren’s son will be in pieces on the ground.”

That’s a good line. This hostage scenario is their big risk, and John’s pretty sure it’ll work out in their favor--he’s his father’s only viable heir, and supposedly one that’s loyal to the crown. Washington can’t afford to lose the support of the Laurens family. So the crowd parts, and Cato jumps onto the nearest riderless horse--pulling John up in front of him--and gallops off in pursuit of the riders. John cranes his neck back and sees Alex staring after them with dead eyes.

\---

They ride hard over the next hours. The General pretends to be a corpse, and Laurens a hostage, until they reach the mountain creek they had named as the fork in their paths, where two fresh horses already waited for John and the General. Gratefully, the six original riders unstrap the corpses from their saddles.

Laurens watches the General warily as the man blinks and stumbles, only barely holding himself upright. It’s clear that the last days have not been easy on him. But any other man would have broken, and seeing that the General he had never met is a real man--that gives him more hope than any idealist fantasy could. He’s shaken from his reverie when the General beckons him over to where he sits on a nearby boulder.

John salutes. It feels good to do so for someone he respects.

“At ease, soldier,” the General says quietly. “You’re John Laurens?” John nods. “Thank you. I owe you my life. I seem to owe my life to many people, these days.” He offers a small, grim smile.

“You are the heart of our rebellion, sir. Anyone would have done the same.”

“But not many would have done so with such style. Using yourself as the hostage was inspired. Were the dummy corpses your idea, or--”

“Hercules Mulligan, sir. Though he wanted to use scarecrows. I pointed out they don’t move the same way as a real body, and that a small group of the emperor’s lawmen had recently left the estate. But the decoy plan was all Hercules.”

The general nods. “I thought that might be. Mr. Mulligan is the handler for,” and here he pauses, and a shadow crosses his face, visible even beneath the purple swelling of two black eyes, “several of our spies in the field. I have a question for you, son.”

“Anything.”

“You are a friend of Alexander Washington, aren’t--”

John corrects him before he can finish. “Hamilton.”

“I’m sorry?”

“My apologies, sir. Only--he’s Alexander Hamilton. I won’t call the torture and humiliation the tyrant has put him through a marriage.”

The General blinks. He’s likely not used to being corrected, but there’s also something tender there. As though John has given him some precious gift. “Hamilton. I had never learned his name.”

Because the tyrant had taken it from him, John thinks. Had forced him into the Schuyler name, and then into his own.

The General continues. “That only confirms my point then. You know him, are his friend?”

“I am.”

“Will you tell me about him?”

John startles. “Sir, you have to understand that Alex is a prisoner. He’s not in control, anything that he did while you were captured--”

“Son, son. Calm down. I don’t bear any ill will toward him.”

“Then why do you want to know?”

The General frowns. Pauses for a long moment, considering, then says in a low voice, “because he called you here. The tyrant would have had me drawn and quartered that very night, and the Prince--and Hamilton--made him wait for you. So that you could arrange this rescue.”

Alex made him wait. Alex called for John to save the General. The words circle in John’s head, unable to settle on any fixed meaning. He remembers Prince Alexander curled into the side of the tyrant like some pretty pet, and he remembers a twig of a young man writing like mad for the cause of independence, before they had both realized the truth behind Washington’s facade. He remembers Hamilton quivering with nervous energy as he showed John the knife secreted away in his coat, as he left for the emperor’s tent for the last time. They had called Washington a general, then.

John sits beside the General, propriety be damned. They’re all rebels anyhow. “Alex did that?”

“He did.”

John closes his eyes. “He’s still fighting.”

He’s sure he doesn’t imagine the awe in the General’s voice when he responds. “Yes, Lord Laurens, he is.”

\---

As soon as the General returns to his duties as the leader of the rebellion--long before his doctor wants him to but long after he believes he should--he summons Hercules Mulligan to the safe house they keep in a tavern outside town. The broad man sets aside the pile of sample curtains he had brought for the innkeeper, and takes one of the chairs at the overturned chest that the General generously thought of as his desk.

“Sir,” he says with a respectful nod. The General returns the gesture.

“How is your network?”

A crease forms between the spymaster’s eyebrows. “I’m going to need more context, General. Given recent circumstances, my duty is to the safety of my spies, second only to the rebellion.” He shifts his weight, looking awkward in the tiny space. “What happened at Mount Vernon?”

The General nods. Mulligan had always been protective. “I met Publius. I had wondered how he acquired such privileged information, how he was privy to the tyrant’s personal matters when he hated the man so.”

“You thought the Prince was another Marquis, if a weaker one. Hamilton is good at what he does.” Hamilton, the same name the Laurens boy had used.

“When can I speak to him?”

“You can’t. I’m sorry, General. I know you two were close. But he’s gone in deep. As soon as he knew your were safe, he sent a signal that he wasn’t to be contacted except in the most dire of circumstances. I would have told him to do it, if he hadn’t himself--even if the tyrant does not suspect him, he will be monitored closely after your escape.”

The General does not inquire after the informant again. The rebellion is kneecapped without his intelligence, but they have their General, and the Marquis had not tortured their secrets out of him, and so they were grateful. For his part, the General tries to concentrate on his work, not to twist and turn his mind around the quick-witted spy who had traded hidden confidences with him on the palace’s bloody marble floors.

The General is hard pressed to imagine what deep cover is like for a man like Hamilton. Did he pretend to himself that he loved his husband? To spend every day with his captor with no agenda, no secret goal to lend him some kind of agency. To be--he winced--entirely a possession.

It goes on in that manner for months. Longer than Mulligan said deep cover would be necessary. After a year, Mulligan haltingly says that he feared that Hamilton remains silent because the emperor suspected his part in the rescue. He is still alive--appears in parades, stiff and silent and beautiful at the emperor’s side, dances at balls with perfect tiny steps--but the General knows that his dead smile can hide a kingdom of evils.

He concocts any number of plans to help the Prince escape, knowing it is a fantasy--that they cannot risk so much to rescue one man. The real man who hides inside the General threatens mutiny against his own heartless exterior, but the General keeps him trapped inside.

When he meets with Mulligan’s other contacts in the little basement safe house where he had first met Publius, keeping the lights out as he had with him, he shoves away the fear that each one of them is in as dire straights as Hamilton.

He tells himself they all make sacrifices for the rebellion.

\---

Very early in the morning, a rider enters the hideout where the General has made his base for the last weeks. It has been a year and a season since the General’s capture and subsequent escape--the scars have faded, though they ache when it rains. He no longer dreams of Hamilton every night. Only most.

The rider tells him he is needed at Mulligan’s safe house, with all haste.

Pawing the sleep from his eyes, the General saddles Nelson himself and is there within the hour.

He lets himself into the passageway in the root cellar of an adjoining house and lights the torch by the door with his own lantern. As he makes his way down the tunnel, a keening noise becomes clear--a woman’s tears, barely controlled, and the low murmur of Hercules comforting her. He quickens his steps.

Easing open the door to the basement hideaway, he sees the source of the crying sitting on a crate, Mulligan beside her. She looks up at him and blinks through the tears.

Her face swims into his memory through a mist of pain and poppy. He remembers her in a faded red dress, slipping gilded instruments of torture into her sleeves. “You,” he says, dumbfounded. She sobs. “No, it’s alright, child. What’s your name?” Mulligan is looking at him, and the General ignores him, fearing what he might see there.

“I’m Mariah, Mr. General, sir,” she says quietly.

“And what happened?”

“He should tell you.”

Finally the General looks to Mulligan, assuming that’s the “he” Mariah intends, but Mulligan shakes his head--nods toward the second room in the hideaway, where the General had once met with Publius. Without a word, the General follows his gesture and pries open the old door.

He’s not shocked to see Hamilton there, but his breath slips away from him nonetheless.

Hamilton sits by one of the bookshelves of pamphlets that Mulligan keeps down here, scribbling on a little pad of paper. Completely absorbed, but at the door’s creak he looks up. There are dark hollows under his eyes, that must have been hidden by cosmetics before--they outline and emphasize the corpse stare that has haunted the General for over a year. He’s wearing an odd patchwork of clothes--a dark vest of fine silk, a servant’s brown coat, a guardsman’s breeches. The ribbon tying his hair back in a frizzled queue is, on closer inspection, a leather shoelace. As though the Hamilton before him is a memory, reconstructed from whatever scraps the Prince could find. But those dead eyes give him away.

“General,” Hamilton stands and inclines his head, deeper than people usually do for him.

The General closes the door, having trouble taming his thoughts into words. He settles for, “I am--very glad to see you safe.”

Hamilton winces. “You as well, sir.”

“To what do we owe your visit, and--” he gestures helplessly toward the woman in the chamber beyond.

“We left together. The, ah--the bonds we form in captivity, I suppose,” he avoids the General’s eyes, and the General is left with the odd impression that Hamilton fears he will laugh. The General stammers for a moment.

“That’s--that’s quite alright. We’ll care for her, she helped me a year ago. Just as you did.” Hamilton nods. “We’ve missed your intelligence.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Hamilton hurries and oh, no, that’s not what the General had meant at all--“I hadn’t meant to leave the rebellion without my services but--”

“No, I’m sure you didn’t, son.” Hamilton’s eyes flick up at the word, one he hadn’t used for him since they’d begun their trysts. He’d called him “darling,” then, with no other name for the informant he had begun to love--they had mutually agreed that no one should be called “Publius” in bed, however honorable a historical character. “I understand, whatever happened.”

A long, long silence, while the unasked question stretches between them.

The General is used to long silences. Hamilton snaps it. “You knew who I was, I couldn’t--”

“You feared you would be exposed? That I would give up your identity, when I hadn’t given a single secret up to the Marquis’ men when they tortured me?”

Hamilton gapes. “No! I trust you, sir, but after you knew I assumed that. That.” He stops, looking at the pad of paper as thought it could help him, looks toward the door where Mariah’s sobs have quieted, to be replaced with low talk between her and Mulligan. He closes his eyes, and says in a rush. “You’d seen me, General. You know what I am. And I knew that you’d, that you talk to me with that voice, and the tone would be just a little different, and, and it is,” the words are tight, tense and breaking. “And I knew that if I saw you again, I’d never be able to go back.”

He wondered if it was his shattered heart that Hamilton could hear, clinking loose among his ribs. “Hamilton, I--”

“Who told you that name?” The man sounds almost angry.

“Would you prefer that I didn’t use it? Laurens told me that it was yours.”

He doesn’t say anything, just mouths the name silently. Laurens. 

Aware of the long time they’ve spent standing--he’d been riding, and so had Hamilton--the General takes the other, mismatched chair in the room and gestures for Hamilton to do the same. Instead, Hamilton takes a step back and leans against the bookcase. He’s tense, though, like he’s testing the water of a cold pond.

The General raises an eyebrow. “You’re here now.”

“Because I’m not going back.” Hamilton meets his eyes. His mouth is pulled into a tense line, and there’s a flicker of real anger behind his eyes. So quick that the General calls it wishful thinking. He waits for further explanation. What Hamilton gives him seems unrelated, but passionate. “You’ve wondered why I didn’t kill him.”

“You’d be dead, the Marquis would have killed you.”

Hamilton waves a hand in dismissal. “Not the point. From the moment I tried to kill him the first time, that was how this ends. If the son of a bitch died, even of a bout of influenza, he had had the Marquis swear to kill me. I don’t know if it was in case I was responsible but hadn’t been caught, or if he just couldn’t bear the thought of my living without him.” His nose wrinkled in scorn. “My death has never scared me, General, it’s--comfortable enough to seem a memory, not an unknown.”

The General would be worried at the flippancy of that, if the feeling weren’t so familiar to him.

Hamilton continues. “He would have sent the Marquis after the Schuyler sisters. My sisters, I suppose.” He grimaces. “One would die each time I disobeyed him, and all three if I harmed him. And it would look like the most grisly of accidents, the Marquis promised me.”

“The Schuyler sisters are all alive,” the General remarked, stunned.

“I never disobeyed him.” Hamilton swallows. “I’ve spent the last--year, I suppose. It took a while. Hunting down correspondence. Mariah helped. We found letters that suggested Washington was planning to marry them off, to various foreign rulers that the tyrant wanted alliances with. Still within the Marquis’ range, but outside of their father’s protection. Which they would have needed.”

“Who--”

“Martha Custis, for one. Eliza was meant to go to her.”

The General nods slowly. “You gave the information to them. Got them to run away.”

“No.” Hamilton shakes his head. “I gave it to their father. He threw me to Washington for a bribe, but he would do anything for his daughters. As someone who has also--who has done anything for his daughters, I have to consider him a kindred spirit, in some way. He’s committed to your rebellion, sir.”

His brain gallops away from him. Philip Schuyler isn’t the most powerful of the tyrant’s supporters--but he’s one of the most well-placed, and he’s rich. He could fund a real army, if they generously employed guerrilla tactics and played fast with honorable rules of engagement.

But it means something else, too, and Alexander’s eyes shine with it. “You don’t have to go back,” the General whispers.

Hamilton launches off the shelf, then, and crosses the tiny room in a stride to fall into the General’s arms. A day’s stubble scratches at his neck and Hamilton is here, with him, safe in his arms, and he’ll never go back again, there’s no hold left.

He bends his head to kiss him, cradling the small of Hamilton’s back with a strong hand.

The kiss is soft, and lovely, and Hamilton recoils.

As though the General has sucked it from his throat, Hamilton’s breath is gone, and the young man shoves him clumsily away and crumples to the floor with a strangled cry, wracked with sobs. Mariah bursts in at the noise, kneeling by Hamilton’s side without a look to the General.

The General stumbles back against the wall while Hamilton shivers, his breath shuddering but growing closer to even in rhythm with Mariah’s low words--numbers, French numbers, the General thinks.

From the floor, the broken pieces of Alexander Hamilton look up at Washington, free from the vise that held them together, and his eyes are alive.


End file.
